JAC Volume 14 Issue 1

Dear Jane,

I just finished reading your "Postcards from the Edge," and I was wondering.

About silence. You initially introduce us to silence as war. Later silence "attends the recognition of an important event," but I never escape the sense that silence for you is, well, unsafe. Particularly in the classroom. That led me to thinking that perhaps my students agree with you. A little background here: one of my colleagues who has audio-taped my classes has noted that he was initially "shocked" by the amount of silence typically found in any one of my discussion-based classes (ninety seconds can seem an eternity). I, perversely, took this as a compliment. I really view (or have viewed up to this point) silence as productive, especially during class discussion. But now I am forced to acknowledge that silence itself, if not as war, could at least be interpreted as a weapon by my students. Silence could be seen as yet another method of "control," especially if school were perceived as naturally a place for sitting in rows. Silence might be an oppressive means of forcing student talk. I don't like this interpretation, but I think it only fair that I put my interpretation of the salutary nature of silence at risk (see Sotirou's article in the same JAC issue in which your "Postcards" appeared).

About authority. In my opinion, student-centered pedagogy in general and feminist pedagogy in particular see teacher authority as, yes, unsafe. Inherently oppressive, like power in general. I appreciate, however, the sense of power that informs Foucault's account, which sees power as productive and "capillary," embodied in everyday social practices (I'm currently reading Nancy Fraser's Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory, University of Minnesota Press, 1989). In this context, the teacher's exercise of authority in the classroom need not be equated with oppression.

If the classroom is viewed as necessarily a dangerous place, "where anything could happen," then might not the war we wage in the classroom appropriately be against safety itself? Might not silence be welcome, as well as an exquisitely bright sun and sharply blue skies?

Wondering, in Ames,